


last night i dreamed somebody loved me.

by bigmoneygator



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Universe, M/M, Memory Related, Past Relationship(s), Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 10:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10592493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigmoneygator/pseuds/bigmoneygator
Summary: When it's been a hundred years since you've seen the person that you loved in any shape to speak to you and now that you can finally say something, you're not entirely sure what to say.set directly in the middle ofcivil warevents; a one-shot deal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I originally intended this to be a long series of the alternative histories of Steve and Bucky (now that I've tweaked the idea a bit, I might return to it, but it all remains to be seen really), so I finished the prologue and tried desperately to work on the subsequent chapters to no avail and I stuck this on the back burner until I could figure something out. After a while, I was just like 'fuck it, I'm too proud of this to leave it stuck on my harddrive forever.' 
> 
> Special thanks to [warmongerer](http://warmongerer.tumblr.com) for editing this and making sure my C- Steve Rogers is just as shiny as my A+ Bucky Barnes. (I know she has an AO3 account but I can't scroll back on her tumblr far enough to find it because the internet is being terrible. OH WELL.)

The stretch of time lays between the two of them as surely as the space between the two beds they sit on, occupying space together the way they used to several lifetimes ago. It had been an easy thing, this shared existence. As natural as breathing or a heart beating or turning at the sound of your name. There are a thousand things in that space between those two beds in that hotel room.

They are mirror images of one another, as they so often used to be. Hands on the mattress at their sides, resting but poised to hoist themselves up at a moment's notice. Spines bowed slightly like the old men they should be. Heads tilted toward the floor as if the bland pattern in the nubby carpet is more interesting than anything they might have to say to each other. Steve raises his eyes briefly, considering the man he knows so well. It feels like every atom in every cell of his body is reaching out in muscle memory; a reflex that makes him ache to cross that three foot gap and climb into a lap that he used to find such comfort in. He thinks about the hands on either side of that body – one that he knows and knew and loved, one made out of metal and shimmering like mercury in the dim light being cast by the lamp on the bedside table. He wonders if the unfamiliar hand would have the same memory as the one that was lost, if it would be able to run its fingers through his hair and cradle his cheek and twine with his own like the one that came before it. If it would bring him the same comfort it used to or if it only knew violence and bitter ends? 

Bucky can barely remember those times, and if he knew what Steve was thinking, he would tell him to lose the poetry. That time of their lives has faded to history, just like the small, sickly kid that Steve used to be and the overconfident cockerel that Bucky used to be. He thinks about those people, offers them a small prayer – wondering at the ghosts of those boys that probably exist, haunting the places they used to frequent – but it goes no further. He loved Steve, loves him now, loved him then, with a fierceness that spilled over from mere brotherly affection and familial protectiveness. He wants to say something about it. He wants to acknowledge their shared past. The tiny details that came back to him when he recalled that ghost seem insignificant now – as good as finally having the things that made him _Bucky_ and not a ruthless automaton bent on blood and destruction felt, it still paled to the times when he wasn't his own. It feels like there are two halves of him: the boy that used to bring his mother's cooking to Steve's sad apartment and slipped money into Steve's pocket like he dropped it so he could keep taking care of himself and held onto Steve like he was the last living person on God's good Earth, and this other thing. This thing in his mind functioned like a parasite that had no feeling, had no love or warmth and killed indiscriminately like God but _not_. 

The thing is: he's still not sure if it was something that was inside of him the entire time. If it wasn't just change that they found someone who had that kind of potential all along and exploited it, or if it truly was a random thing. 

Steve can't know all of this. Their body language is frozen in a rictus of confusion and apprehension. Gone are the easy smiles of earlier in the day. Gone is that feeling of brotherhood and reunion. Steve remembers what it was like as a younger man, when all he had was Bucky and the myriad of crushes on the girls that he saw at the soda counters and in line at the movies and he didn't know what any of that meant. Those days are so far removed now they're barely dim memories. He wants, desperately, to reach out and grab Bucky's hands and tell him that it's alright. It’s the same way Bucky used to do the same when Steve was sure he was going to cough himself to death or starve or freeze or just give up. He doesn't, though – because it feels sacrilegious. It feels like this is Bucky's moment, his time to reorient himself in his own mind. 

Slowly, Bucky's feet slide across that worn-down carpet, through the time and the space between them, until they gently knock into Steve's. Startled, Steve looks over at his best friend. His oldest friend. The last person who might understand what's happening inside his head. The long hair suits him more than Steve would have imagined; the puckered, ugly scar around his metal arm does not. 

“Do you remember,” Bucky starts, voice creaking, still not looking up, “when we used to think that we would be with each other for our entire lives?” 

Steve chews on his lip, eyes widening slowly. “We didn't really talk about it. Did we?” 

“I just assumed that you thought it,” Bucky says, voice still slow. He looks up, small sad grin starting to crack his features. “So I thought it too.” 

Steve lets out a little laugh, choked staccato chuckles that seem to chip away at some of the frost in the room. “I guess I did,” he agrees, nodding. “I don't think I ever imagined it in any concrete sense. I didn't think about having a family with you. It was just you and me, sort of drifting into the future together.” 

“I thought you'd be a good dad,” Bucky says, looking surprised at himself as if he'd only just remembered the thought occurring to him. “I didn't think, 'Oh, well, we should have children together, because we're a couple and we're going to get married.' But I thought that maybe one day, when you had kids with some faceless lady I couldn't imagine, you'd be a good dad.” 

“You'd be a good dad, too,” Steve says, but it’s weak because he doesn't believe it. 

“Shut up,” Bucky says, snorting, because he doesn't believe it either. “I was a selfish prick. We both know it.” 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “You could be pretty bad.” 

Bucky shrugs. He doesn't expect Steve to make excuses for him or even tell him to be kinder to himself. Back when they were younger, Steve might have turned a blind eye to Bucky's ill manners and bad behavior – the running around with girls and breaking of hearts and occasional public drunkenness – because he had to. Because who else would be there to take care of him when he needed it? Not that Steve would ever admit that he needed looking after, but someone had to do it, and that someone was Bucky. But now, what was the point? There wasn't any use to sugarcoating what they'd been through, what had happened. Bucky was a bit of a womanizer and he liked his drink and he held down a job because it was his dad's business that he worked for and Steve tagged along because he was too stubborn to back down from a fight or admit that he couldn't keep his furnace lit sometimes or even really admit to the loneliness of his mostly empty apartment. Those were the facts, and time hadn't softened their edges, only sharpened them through the lens of hindsight and their respective experience. 

“Do you remember -” Steve begins, wanting to ask Bucky if he could recall one of Steve's birthdays, the one that Bucky got him a camera and they spent the day snapping photographs on Coney Island and watched the fireworks (and briefly, Steve feels a pang because he doesn't know what happened to those photographs or even the negatives and wonders if they're not in a box somewhere, labeled with his name – or worse, on display at one of the Captain America exhibits in various museums across the country. It's an odd, bittersweet feeling, seeing his belongings at these places. Is he history or is he contemporary? Different thoughts for a different day). He stops though, strangling the sentence midway through when the look in Bucky's eyes suggests that, yes. He remembers it. He remembers every damn thing they ever did together. 

And Bucky _does_ remember. He remembers Steve's birthday and the camera – the Ansco Pioneer that he saved up his pocket money for months to buy because Steve had started pining after photography and film after his father passed away. He remembers the time he tried out for the baseball team in high school because Steve wanted to play _so badly_ but could barely swing a bat. He remembers their first kiss, the most natural kiss he ever gave, when he was nineteen and Steve was eighteen and Steve's mother had just died and he was going to be all alone in that apartment for the first time and their goodbye embrace turned into something else and all the things they'd been feeling for one another their whole lives boiled over into rolling around on the floor. They were fumbling and inept – Steve never having done anything quite like this before and Bucky having never done anything quite like this _with another man_ before, and in the end, they just rubbed against one another through their trousers until they were both spent and Steve cried because his mother had just been buried and Bucky held onto him because he wasn't sure what else to do and Bucky didn't go home to his mother's that night and it didn't stop raining for the next three days. Bucky remembers their entire shared lives as suddenly as if a curtain had been lifted or a veil dropped, and he remembers the times they had to be apart, and the times when he didn't know who he was but understood his purpose – and he remembers the icy stab to his heart when he recognized Steve's face and Steve's eyes and Steve's gentle confusion, and how terrifying that was to know someone and _not_ know them but understand that he _should_ know them. 

Bucky wants Steve to curl up in his arms the way he did that night when Sarah Rogers and her freckles and rough hands and soft Irish brogue went into the ground. He wants it, but this Steve in front of him is larger than life – larger than he remembers from that first time he saw Steve during the war, as if his mind keeps trying to telescope his best friend into something more recognizable. Too large to come to Bucky for comfort anymore. And if Bucky is being honest with himself – and there really isn't any point in lying – he's the one who wants to crawl into Steve's arms now. He feels shattered. They'd broken his mother's vase as kids and tried to piece it together the same way, but with more care than the ones who built him bothered to have in their hands. He feels like a strong wind might rip his mind away from him again and he'll be a cold husk. He feels like Captain America might be the only person strong enough to keep all of his pieces from flying away, and _Steve_ might be the only person who understands why it can't happen again. 

Bucky is almost too proud to ask. _Almost_. 

“Do you think we could eighty-six the whole two queens experience here for a second?” Bucky asks gruffly. 

Steve smiles despite himself. This sounds more like the Bucky he knew, like the Bucky who was getting tired and wasn't willing to listen to Steve blather on about baseball or Picasso for one more God damn second and just wanted to lay down in Steve's bed – the only one they ever shared. 

“Yeah, sure,” Steve says, starting to work his bones into standing so he could go to Bucky's bed. He wonders if Bucky still sleeps with his hand flung over his eyes dramatically, his other arm out so that Steve could use it as a pillow, flat on his back and sawing logs like an old man. 

By the time Steve is on Bucky's side of the room, Bucky is already under the covers. He's not sprawled on his back like he used to be, though: he curls up on his side, a small target for the woes he carries now. Steve clicks off the light and slips underneath the blankets, blindly feeling for the tense ball of nerve that is his best friend. He's so used to being the emotional one of the two of them. He's navigating uncharted waters, having to try and prop Bucky up. He's not even really used to being the reasonable one. It was always Steve who suggested adventures that would probably end up with one or both (but usually just one, and usually just Steve) in some sort of scrape. Steve with the wild heart and the fearless nature, but also Steve with the fragile body and weak constitution. It was Bucky who was the one to say that maybe they should sit this one out, maybe they should go back home, maybe it wasn't a good idea. Bucky had a brave swagger in front of girls and their peers, but it was only Steve who saw the meeker, quiet side of him. 

Bucky always acted how the people around him expected him to act, a people pleaser to the end. His mother, in her thick Romanian accent, called him a “pit-a-bull”. Steve acted how he thought everyone should act; fair and loyal and equal and _right_ , no matter what. Bucky's nature probably worked against him in ways that cut Steve deeply to think about, and he hopes – but does not expect – that wrapping his arms around Bucky might begin to ease some of that burden. 

And it does. Bucky's missed human contact in a way that's strange like how he recognized Steve that first time a few years ago felt strange. It was a thing that he knew he wanted, but couldn't conceptualize; a gnawing sort of emptiness that grew very quietly in the void of his mind and only made itself known in the brief moments after a wipe and before a stasis. Bucky still doesn't quite know how to describe it, except perhaps to compare it to a man who's never had a taste of fruit before in his life – never seen it or heard of it – but still sometimes dreams of something sweet and ripe and cold like a melon or tart and bursting and juicy like a berry, all without having a name for his cravings. 

But Bucky has a name for these wants now, all tied up and wrapped in the package of Steven Grant Rogers, finally in front of him again. It's not impossible to live without love, or even the memory of it – but the abstract concept lingers. Steve is concrete again, hands reaching and fingers grasping, pulling himself closer to Bucky and Bucky closer to him. 

They've missed each other. Steve has a name for the grief he felt when he watched Bucky fall – a name, even, for the grief of seeing Bucky again and not seeing recognition in his eyes. Bucky has no name for the grief inside of him, but he feels it welling up in his chest as Steve rests his chin on top of Bucky's head and breathes out a long breath that might have been a sigh of relief but might just as easily have been the sound of a breath being let out after being held for a very, very long time. Bucky closes his eyes and wonders if there's even a difference between the two. 

“What do you think it would have been like,” Steve begins, and does not stop himself this time, “if we had both made it home after the war?” 

“Well,” Bucky says as though he's already given this a fair bit of thought, “you would have married Peggy and had a wonderful marriage and maybe a few kids, but I think you would have argued about whether or not to have them because you both had such intense careers. And I would have probably married that girl I went out on a date with the night before I shipped out – I sent her a few letters, you know. Connie. And we would have moved to Long Island and had a long, miserable marriage and a definitely a few miserable kids.” 

“You don't think we would have kept in touch?” Steve asks, not bothering to mask the hurt in his voice at this imagined past that was also simultaneously a future and did not involve their continued friendship. 

“Shut up, of course we would have,” Bucky snorts, pulling himself back so that he could just see the outline of Steve against the light that filtered in through the window behind him. “But it wouldn't have been – like _that_.” 

“I think it would have,” Steve says stubbornly. 

“Really? With wives and kids and you probably being some big SHIELD asset?” 

“I _was_ a SHIELD asset, just ninety years too late. And you think they wouldn't have plucked your happy ass up outta retirement? Steve Rogers' right hand man?” 

“Man, I remember when you were Bucky Barnes' right hand man?” 

“I wasn't your sidekick,” Steve snorts. 

“You were kinda my sidekick,” Bucky laughs. “But it was alright. Wasn't it?” 

“Most of the time. It wasn't fun to live in your shadow.” 

“It wasn't really that fun to live in yours. And believe me,” Bucky pauses to laugh a little, “you cast a _much_ taller shadow.” 

Steve stops and considers this. He knew that Bucky was a jealous person. _Covetous_ might be the better word, if he could recall his Catholic upbringing. Bucky wanted what everyone else had, no matter what it was. He wanted people to pay attention to him, and when they did, they had to _adore_ him. Bucky was fine to let Steve have the spotlight when he was sick or even, for just a little while, when he was Captain America. But it got old for him. He was kind enough never to bring it up, but Steve knew. 

Bucky considers his comment and considers Steve quietly processing it. He thinks about how he could be short and rude and uppity when he wasn't being paid attention to. “You deserved it,” he adds, not hastily. “You always were the better of us.” 

“That's a stretch,” Steve snorts. 

“That's little Steve talking,” Bucky says. “You wanted to be big and strong and brave like Bucky but you were always bigger and stronger and braver.” 

“Is 'braver' a word?” 

“I don't friggin' know,” Bucky quips, his shrill Brooklyn accent making a comeback. “You were what you were, and I was what I was.” 

They're quiet for a moment. Steve runs his hand through Bucky's hair idly, thinking about that future that might have been but wasn't and didn't matter because it would all be in the past now anyway. 

“It would've been a good life,” Bucky says absently, as if he's hearing Steve's thoughts echo into his own mind. They used to sometimes think they could read each other's thoughts the way that good friends always did; saying things that the other was thinking just a moment after the thought occurred. 

It was a comfort that time hadn't seemed to diminish this knack, but Steve was getting tired of the heavy sorts of thoughts that kept coming and hitting him like trucks or baseball bats. He longed for the comfort of the familiar to be a comfort again, and not a shock. 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “It would have been a pretty good life.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://bigmoneygator.tumblr.com), [twitter](http://twitter.com/bigmoneygator), and on your local golf course.


End file.
